Day 13: I Hope You Don't Feel My Pain

It's day 13 of NaBloPoMo, and my last few posts have gotten a bit kooky. Just know that I'm trying my best to shield you from the inevitable variability of post quality around here, but I cannot. I simply cannot.

Some of you have asked about my impending breast-lump biopsy, which I mentioned here and here. My doctor chose to send me for an MRI first, which I guess is standard nowadays, especially for young, firm breasts. Haha! Sweet irony! I of course have fibrocystic breasts, which are dense like young, firm breasts. Only different.

Anyway, I was thrilled to get an MRI. No needles or knives, no squashing of mammaries, no gamma rays blasting through delicate tissues. Three years ago, I had an MRI after a car accident. They put me on my back on a table, and sent me into that tiny tube. They said I could bring music, to listen to on headphones. I chose The Eminem Show, which, in hindsight, was an inconsiderate choice, since the music could be heard throughout the room. How was I to know that? The middle-aged guy who assisted me that day was not impressed. Strangely, I myself could not here the music over the psychotic clanging of the machine. I did get claustrophobic, but I was out of there in 20 minutes. In this case, pain has no memory.

Right up until my appointment yesterday, I had no worries. Even the Sunday appointment seemed great, since I wouldn't have to juggle the kids.

MRI? A quiet respite from the house -- I can't wait!

The first hint that perhaps I'd underestimated the MRI's tortur-device potential came when I saw the words "contrast" and "IV" on the order just before I left my house. I had dye injected for a CT scan several years ago, and it tasted and smelled like I'd eaten an aluminum can or drank the mercury out of six thermometers. Something like that. Work with me here.

As they hooked up the IV, they assured me I wouldn't taste the dye, and they scurried about trying to figure out when I could nurse again. Turned out I didn't have to wait at all. No worries, all around.

Then I asked the woman for headphones, figuring I'd listen to whatever music they had.

"Well, you can have the headphones, but they don't stay on right when you're face down."

"Face down?"

"Yes. And if they move out of place, you can't adjust them."

"Oh. That's fine then. How long in the machine?"

"Inside? 30 minutes."

Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes, face down. In a tube.

I laid down on the cold breast-dangler contraption and put my face in one of those holders that massage therapists use. I could've used a massage. The attendant kept asking if my breasts were in the hole, which they were, but they're so small apparently she couldn't tell. Then she put ear plugs in my ears, and proceeded to speak to me in this tiny muffled mumble, as if I could still hear her with freaking ear plugs in my ears. That's when my lungs stopped taking air and my heart exploded.

"Uh, I think the face-down thing and the ear-plug thing just collided and created an anxiety attack thing."

"Do you need a minute?"

Yeah, a minute to get my clothes on and get the hell out of here.

I'd like to tell you it wasn't that bad, but my mind -- and heart -- raced through the whole thing. Thank God for my vegan/health nut/Dr. Weil days, because breathing exercises were the only thing standing between me and Code Blue. I had 1 inch between my face and the table, for 30 minutes. I felt like I was on Lost and I'd been caputured and put inside a box in the hatch then someone forgot to enter the numbers and the banging and the crashing got louder and louder and louder and .... AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

So, yeah. Breathing exercises.

I have two other tips for having a breast MRI:

1. Take valium. Or some other "has worked for me" type sedative. Give it plenty of time to kick in before you enter the Chamber of Doom. I've never taken valium myself, but when I told the technician I wished I had, she said a lot of people do.

2. Don't, under any circumstances, schedule your MRI for Sunday at noon, especially if your Sunday morning involves, as mine does, about 12 cups of coffee. Your central nervous system will thank you.